3 Things Your Social Media Posts Tell Job Applicants

Your most powerful recruiting tool is the message you're broadcasting on social media. Recruiters should be in lockstep with the marketing department if they hope to compete with other organizations to recruit and retain potential employees.

Why do the top health systems attract the best talent? That's easy. Their reputations precede them. And increasingly that's happening via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.

A candidate's initial web search can lead to a stone wall. A general homepage, with a fairly informative careers page lack any flavor, character, or buzz to excite applicants. Maybe there are some jobs posted. Whoopee.

"When we're talking employer branding, social media is the purest way for an organization to distribute their brand," says Shawn Kessler, senior strategist at ab+c, a marketing communications agency. Kessler heads up recruitment and marketing division within the agency, and specializes in healthcare. Eighty to ninety percent of his work leans heavily on employer branding efforts.

Let's take an honest look in the mirror.

Here are the three negative messages of your bare-bones social media presence:

1.You fail to set yourself apart from any other hospital or health system.

What's worse than an applicant being unable to find any insight into your employee culture? The fact that you actually do all of these things: the picnics, the run/walks for charity, employee concerts, but no one knows because you don't post about these events on social media. You look like everybody else.

With all of the photo-sharing capabilities, Facebook is a great resource for a job seeker to investigate day-to-day life and brand messaging of a future employer. It's also a great way for employers to stand out from the crowd.

Facebook's company page has 95703934 "Likes," From charities to appreciation days to celebrity concerts at the office, it's full of posts about employee events. The company is letting the world know how much it values its employees.

2.You fail to attract the right kind of jobseekers:

Applicants follow their dream jobs on LinkedIn.

Like it or not, when young physicians, nurses, and even nonclinical staff are looking at where they want to start their professional careers, they're more likely than ever to start their research with your company LinkedIn page.

Unfortunately, your former employees are more likely to show up than your non-existent LinkedIn presence. When you search a company on LinkedIn, profiles of past and present employees display. The length of their tenure, what company they moved on to next—all of this information is leaving impressions on your talent pool.

"Anytime we can get a physician willing to put their own name on something, or they're willing to let us tag them in a video, that shows up on their social media profiles. Those colleagues they're associated with and did training with are going to see that," says Kessler. "We want those folks talking about the organization in a way that's going to be in front of their friends and colleagues, showcasing their work. Because that's how you attract that additional talent pool."

Employees want the company brand their stamped with to carry on as a positive beacon to future employment opportunities. They want to get a sense of the kind of people they might be working with, and where this job may lead them in the future.

"LinkedIn has yielded a lot of success on the corporate recruitment side," says Jeff Lowry, senior corporate recruiter at Geisinger Health System in Danville, PA. Social media and job postings make up approximately 35% of their recruiting efforts.

"We've been driving a lot of candidates to our career site through our LinkedIn page. It's been really successful there for marketing, sales, and insurance professionals. That's where our best return has been. Our strategy moving forward is to incorporate all areas of talent acquisition here."

LinkedIn's own company page has more than 500,000 followers. With a careers page including day-in-the-life videos and messages from executives, job applicants get a thorough picture of what it's like to work at LinkedIn.

3.Your employees aren't proud brand ambassadors.

"Organizations that have a strongly engaged population of employees on social media, I think those employees are proud of their employer and the work they do," says Kessler. "It sends the message that they genuinely believe their organization helps people, and I think they're proud of that. Employees can be a little skittish, but those that believe their organization is there, doing the right thing, I think those employees are likely to stand up and defend what they do."

At Twitter, the San Francisco headquarters has its own handle, @Twoffice. The account actively ReTweets and shares employees' tweets and highlights from their workdays. From movie screenings to celebrity visitors to new signage and birthday parties, the company culture is out there for the world to see.

Without this social media presence, you leave applicants to wonder: If your company truly has a great employee culture, and people enjoy working there, then why aren't they shouting it from the rooftops?

When employees share positive moments from their work days, companies reap the rewards in a positive and healthy brand message, as authentic as the employees themselves.